This week we’re joined by Mark Côté, who leads the Developer Infrastructure organization at Shopify, to learn about their developer survey program. Mark shares what went into designing and running the survey, what they’ve done to drive participation rates higher, and how they interpret their data. Mentions and links: Follow Mark on LinkedIn Read Shopify’s engineering blog Discussion points: (1:32) Starting the survey (3:20) How the survey has evolved (4:22) Three types of information gleaned fro...
Sep 27, 2023•44 min•Ep. 46
Thomas Khalil, Head of Platform and SRE at Trivago, describes how the teams reporting into him are structured, the tactics they’re using to increase awareness of their work, and how they demonstrate their impact. Discussion points: (1:17) The pillars of the Central Platform organization (2:18) The organization’s focus on time to market and efficiency (3:09) The differences in developer experience between teams (4:37) Deciding whether to consolidate services (5:57) How platform, developer experie...
Aug 22, 2023•31 min•Ep. 42
This week’s guest is Jenny McClain, who leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast. Jenny’s team focuses on enabling individual teams at Toast to drive their own productivity improvements, and this conversation dives into how they tackle this problem. Discussion points: (1:19) How the R&D Enablement team works (2:50) Why the team was formed (4:31) The types of work the team focuses on (7:31) Identifying the problems this team would solve (11:23) How team embeds work (17:19) The learning resource...
Aug 16, 2023•44 min•Ep. 45
This week we’re joined by Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green, who lead the Engineering Productivity Research team at Google. Ciera and Collin have written several papers from studies they’ve conducted, and this discussion covers the insights from their research as well as their work more broadly at Google. Discussion points: (1:19) About the Engineering Productivity Research team (3:57) How the team interacts with the rest of the organization (5:58) The different backgrounds included on the team (13:...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 44
This week we’re joined by Jason Kennedy, Senior Engineering Manager of Developer Experience at One Medical. Jason’s team takes a uniquely customer-driven approach to improving the developer experience, and in this episode he describes their philosophy and how it works in practice. Jason explains how they shadow developers, how they run surveys, and more. Discussion points: (1:02) Renaming from Engineering Efficiency to Engineering Experience (4:17) How Platform and DevEx teams differ (5:38) How ...
Jul 12, 2023•45 min•Ep. 43
Matthew and Luke lead Extend’s Developer Experience team, a team that has approached their work in a way that is more forward-thinking than most. In this episode, they cover how they deliver impact at multiple levels of the organization, their journey with productivity metrics, and how they’ve made DevEx a C-level concern. Discussion points: (1:40) How the DevEx team started and where it fits at Extend (5:08) Tradeoffs of DevEx reporting into Platform (6:40) The mandate and tasks they focus on (...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 40
Manuel Pais delves into one of the concepts covered in his book “Team Topologies”: platform and enabling work. Manuel shares how he views the strategy behind when and how to invest in platform or enabling work. This conversation also goes into each type of work in more detail, covering topics such as measuring cognitive load and where platform engineering may be heading in the future. (2:13) How enabling teams and platform teams are different (10:28) What it looks like for a team to own both pla...
Jun 07, 2023•53 min•Ep. 39
Thansha Sadacharam, who leads Tech Learning and Insights at Peloton walks us through the journey of building the company’s developer experience survey. She shares what went into the survey’s design, rollout, and maintenance, as well as the different teams involved. Discussion points: (1:19) Where the idea for running a developer survey originated (6:36) Advice for other leaders getting buy-in for these initiatives (11:27) The first steps in designing the survey (18:21) How the survey incorporate...
May 24, 2023•59 min•Ep. 38
In this episode, Abi is interviewed by Laura Tacho about the new paper he co-authored with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, and Dr. Michaela Greiler. Abi and Laura discuss the pitfalls of some of the common metrics organizations use, and how the new paper builds on prior frameworks such as DORA and SPACE to offer a new approach to measuring and improving developer productivity. Discussion topics: (2:20) Laura’s background (3:59) Laura’s view on git metrics (11:05) What developer ex...
May 16, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 37
Tara Hernandez, the VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB, joins the podcast to give an inside look at what the developer experience looks like at an organization that develops a database. Here, Tara shares what it looks like to develop, test, and release changes at MongoDB, while also providing insight into how the company invests in developer productivity more broadly. Discussion points: (0:57) What was going on at the time Tara joined (4:37) Tara’s perspective on the buzz of platform engine...
May 02, 2023•40 min•Ep. 36
Max Kanat-Alexander, the Tech Lead for the Developer Productivity and Insights Team at LinkedIn, shares an inside look at LinkedIn’s metrics platform and how teams across the organization use it. Discussion points: (1:31) Why Max shares how his team is measuring productivity (3:20) Why some teams use metrics and some don’t (6:03) The types of metrics Max’s team focuses on (12:59) The role of TPMs (17:05) How Max would measure productivity if he weren’t at LinkedIn (25:04) Surprises in how teams ...
Apr 26, 2023•53 min•Ep. 35
Mike Fisher, the former CTO at Etsy, spearheaded a multi-year developer experience initiative aimed at improving developer happiness and efficiency during his time at Etsy. Here, he shares the story of that initiative, including the pillars of the program and the investment that went into it. Towards the end of the conversation, Mike also shares his perspective on measuring developer productivity. Discussion points: (1:31) What was happening at Etsy when Mike joined (4:08) The scaling challenges...
Apr 19, 2023•53 min•Ep. 34
Karl’s team at American Airlines were early adopters of Backstage, and in this episode he shares their journey of implementing and rolling out a developer portal. He also describes two of the extensions his team has built for their portal. Discussion points: (1:24) Where the idea of building a developer portal came from (7:24) What the developer experience looked like before the portal (10:41) Initiating the project (14:16) The decision to choose Backstage (16:28) The V1 scope for the portal (19...
Apr 05, 2023•54 min•Ep. 33
As product lead, Russ Nealis has been focused on introducing the discipline of product management in the Developer Foundations organization. This episode discusses the reasons why PMs are currently uncommon in platform organizations, examples of when having a PM has been helpful, and more. Discussion points: (1:23) Russ’s role at Plaid (2:49) Why platform product managers are uncommon (3:28) Backgrounds to look for when hiring a platform PM (4:58) Deciding whether to hire a platform PM (6:20) Si...
Mar 29, 2023•45 min•Ep. 32
In this deep-dive episode, Brian Scanlan, Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom, describes how the company’s on-call process works. He explains how the process started and key changes they’ve made over the years, including a new volunteer model, changes to compensation, and more. Discussion points: (1:28) How on-call started at Intercom (10:11) Brian’s background and interest in being on-call (14:06) Getting engineers motivated to be on-call (16:37) Challenges Intercom saw with on-call as it gr...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 31
Jack Li explains how his production engineering team rolled out a new incident review process, how they’ve made the case for investing in reliability, and specific tools his team has built to improve reliability. — Discussion points: (1:25) How Jack became interested in reliability (3:24) Where the Instagram Reels team fits into the broader organization (4:05) What Jack’s team focuses on (4:55) The role of production engineering at Instagram versus Shopify (8:32) The essence of DevOps (10:44) Pr...
Feb 16, 2023•56 min•Ep. 30
Nathen Harvey, who leads DORA at Google, explains what DORA is, how it has evolved in recent years, the common challenges companies face as they adopt DORA metrics, and where the program may be heading in the future. — Discussion points: (1:48) What DORA is today and how it exists within Google (3:37) The vision for Google and DORA coming together (5:20) How the DORA research program works (7:53) Who participates in the DORA survey (9:28) How the industry benchmarks are identified (11:05) How th...
Jan 25, 2023•55 min•Ep. 29
This week's guest is Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, who goes by the name Peggy. Peggy is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, the Chief Scientist at DX, and co-author of the SPACE Framework, which is the topic of focus in this episode. Today’s conversation discusses what the SPACE framework is and what went into developing the metrics and categories. Peggy also shares where she sees this line of research heading next. — Discussion points: (1:29) Peggy’s background (4:01) Wha...
Jan 18, 2023•38 min•Ep. 28
This week’s guest is Jeremiah Lee, who was previously a manager at Stripe and product manager at Spotify. This conversation focuses on org structure, and specifically Jeremiah’s experience with the popular squad model from Spotify. Jeremiah provides the backstory on where the model came from, what parts of the model were a challenge, and advice for leaders either already adopting the model or considering doing so. Discussion points: (1:40) What the Spotify model is (4:39) Jeremiah’s impression o...
Jan 11, 2023•44 min•Ep. 27
Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and VP of Engineering at Atlassian, explains how to advocate for investing in platform work, which projects to fund, and what distinguishes a great platform leader. — Discussion points: (1:38) Jean-Michel’s definition of platform work (6:44) Why reliability, performance, and stability do fall within platform work (7:24) The consequences of lacking a product mindset in platform (9:20) Why and how to advocate for investing 50% of R&D spend in platform...
Jan 04, 2023•53 min•Ep. 26
Jonathan Biddle, Director of Engineering Effectiveness at Wayfair, shares the story of how his team found repeat success and subsequently grew in size and scope. He shares lessons they’ve borrowed from startups, including understanding the adoption curve and knowing your core users, and offers advice for other platform teams looking to move to the next stage. — Discussion points: (01:15) How Jonathan moved into his role (05:30) Why Platforms teams are in a position of leverage, but also ambiguit...
Dec 20, 2022•50 min•Ep. 25
Ian White, Director of Platform Engineering at DAT, joined the company to scale their Kubernetes-based cloud infrastructure, which has come under stress as their business has grown over the past couple years. Here he shares how he partnered with developers to learn about their challenges, how we conveyed a vision for how the company needed to evolve, and how he’s been working with development teams and business stakeholders to successfully drive change. — (01:00) - The challenges DAT was facing ...
Dec 13, 2022•50 min•Ep. 24
Brian Guthrie, co-founder and CTO at Orgspace and former VP of Engineering at Meetup, has the unique experience of having previously decommissioned his Platform team. In this episode, Brian talks about that story openly, and shares advice for Platform teams to make sure they’re well positioned within their organizations. Discussion points: Brian’s background and story at Meetup - [00:02:20] Brian’s perspective on Platform work, generally - [00:06:40] The conversation around dissolving the Platfo...
Dec 07, 2022•34 min•Ep. 23
Max Kanat-Alexander and Or Michael Berlowitz (Berlo), share how they gather both periodic and real-time feedback from developers. Discussion points: Overview of the listening channels used by Max and Berlo’s team - [00:00:58] Origin story of the Developer Engagement and Insights team - [00:02:49] Perspectives on volume metrics - [00:05:00] How the periodic surveys work - [00:08:51] Investment required to build the periodic surveys and real-time feedback - [00:14:20] How results are handled - [00...
Nov 30, 2022•47 min•Ep. 22
Mark Côté , Director of Engineering of Developer Infrastructure at Shopify, explains an exercise the Infrastructure group went through to define their boundaries of work. He shares their areas of focus, the team’s guiding principles, how they use their developer happiness survey to decide what to prioritize, and more. — Discussion points: (0:48) Mark's background (1:43) How the Developer Acceleration org is structured (4:43) The Infrastructure team's chart (5:35) Three opportunities for impact (...
Oct 26, 2022•46 min•Ep. 21
Utsav Shah , who leads Platform at Vanta and previously led Developer Effectiveness at Dropbox, shares the story of Dropbox’s journey with measuring developer productivity. Utsav discusses what he learned about both system and survey-based measures, his opinion on the usefulness of common Git metrics, and more.
Oct 12, 2022•45 min•Ep. 20
Michael Galloway (Doma and ex-Netflix) describes his process for interviewing developers to understand where his team should focus. He also explains how he thinks about the strategic value of a Platform team. Resources mentioned: Customer Interview Guide Customer Interview Questions
Oct 05, 2022•43 min•Ep. 19
In this episode, Willie Yao , Head of Infrastructure at Notion and former Head of Developer Infrastructure at Airbnb, provides a unique perspective on how Developer Experience teams work in hypergrowth companies. He shares how Airbnb developed a customer-first mindset internally, what it took to get Airbnb’s leadership invested in that effort, and how he’s approaching DevEx at Notion today.
Sep 28, 2022•47 min•Ep. 18
Twitter’s Developer Experience team is more mature than most. Here, Jasmine James , a Senior Engineering Manager - Developer Experience, explains how her team manages support requests, why they consider personas as part of their prioritization, and how they present the ROI of the team’s work.
Sep 13, 2022•28 min•Ep. 17
In this special episode, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, author of award-winning book Accelerate and co-author of " The SPACE of Developer Productivity ", talks about her work with DORA, the inspiration behind the SPACE framework, and how she's thinking about developer experience. Watch the on-demand fireside chat or read the announcement of Nicole joining DX as a strategic advisor....
Sep 01, 2022•31 min•Ep. 16
